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Notes -
I do deeply appreciate Gibbon. Usually material this dense is slow going for me, but I slide through Gibbon as easily as a pulpy sci-fi novel. The first volume especially gets into a rhythm where the details are interesting, but not particularly important. Between Commodus and Diocletian an uninterrupted procession of military dictators, virtually held hostage by their own military, who reign for relatively short periods of instability and decline. Some slow the decline, but don't reverse it. Some go full speed ahead. It gets to a point where people are begging not to be proclaimed emperor because the military has murdered so many of them when they aren't bribed enough. I honestly can't tell you, despite having just read it over this last month, most of the particularly good or bad emperors from that period. But I wasn't studying for an exam, and I mostly don't care. It was a pleasure to read all the same, and the arc of history, at least as Gibbon tells it, is made clear.
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